While this discourse was going on in a loud voice at the other end of the table, an English party at the other extremity of it were discreetly muttering their commonplaces beneath their breath. When any of their remarks did rise to the surface, they were usually to the effect that they thought the Pope ought to be made to show himself more to the people; they believed they would have to go away without seeing him at all. The Queen they had seen that afternoon driving on the Pincio--such shabby liveries, such a poor turn-out altogether! Why, an English squire would be ashamed--and so forth. Some Germans, in another quarter, were exhausting themselves in delighted recollections of what they had seen. As usual, they were far more thoroughly instructed than either the English or the Americans of the same class in life, and had gone about their sight-seeing in a methodical, systematic manner worthy of all praise. They knew what they had seen. They knew what they wanted to see. They were full of statistics and gutturals and enthusiasm; they discussed ‘der Nero,’ ‘der August,’ and ‘der Hadrian’ with solid good sense and deep interest, the while they valiantly struggled with the tough roast-beef, and devoured bones and all the hapless sparrow-like creatures which have been already described. The Italians, who were exclusively men, some of them youths in business houses or professional offices, and one or two older ones, appeared to be in their way decent fellows enough. They spoke with the rapidity of lightning; their dark eyes gleamed and their white teeth flashed. They were full of _cortesia_, and at the same time brimming over with amusement and a keen sense of the ridiculous. Nothing that was absurd in the rest of the company escaped the piercing eyes of these young men. Minna, who understood all about it, and was well acquainted with the Italian quickness at grasping all that went on around them, admired more than ever their presence of mind and unvarying politeness to those who caused them so much amusement. With patient, polite gravity they listened to the well-meant efforts of some English and Germans to converse with them in their own language; nothing but an irrepressible gleam in their eyes betrayed that they were secretly convulsed with laughter at some of the wild mistakes and extraordinary turns of expression of their interlocutors. ‘I dare say,’ thought Minna to herself, ‘that some of those stupid-looking English and Germans, and those self-conceited Americans, are thinking to themselves that “these foreigners” are a set of chattering, grinning apes; I have so often heard them express that discriminating opinion. Little do they think that to the apes they appear more like clumsy clowns in a pantomime than anything else.’